Vegas-bound! What to expect from CES

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All of us at CrunchGear are prepping for the pain-fest we all know as the Consumer Electronics Show. For those not aware, every January, just after they’ve waddled away from the all-you-can-eat buffet called the Holidays, journalists, bloggers, and big box electronics buyers all head to Las Vegas for more of the same.

This year we’re doing a few cool things including a full live stream of our coverage right on the site thanks to our friends at LiveStream. We’ll be running the stream 24/7 and we’ll try to grab just about every major meeting and event we attend. However, I’ve just been going over our sources and have a few basic predictions for you on CES.

This is the year of 3D. Although I doubt 3D will truly become mass market in 2010, Avatar will definitely encourage a slight uptick in Blu-Ray sales.

E-readers galore.. In fact, Sprint just announcing something called the Skiff. There may also be a no-name few e-readers, but don’t expect anyone to break Kindle hegemony this CES. They can’t even ship Nooks until February and the rest of the e-readers will be also rans until popular demand ramps up in the e-reader space.

Tablets? What tablets? I doubt we’re going to see much in the way of “media tablets” at CES. If Apple launches anything at the end of January, no one wants to be the doofus with a tablet “coming in Spring 2010″ while Apple rolls over the industry like the Juggernaut.

There will be no October Surprise. This one is getting me down. As far as we can tell there will be no amazing surprises at CES. Motorola will have about five upcoming Android phones, Samsung is dumping out some Android phones (but not at CES), and Palm, well, hopefully they’ll release something nice to buoy the spirits. Otherwise in terms of embargoed releases we’ve seen and the leaked stuff so far, I can’t imagine there will be much to amaze us.

This is the year of recovery. Cynicism aside, CES will be big this year. Companies are coming out of the funk of the recession and by all indications they’re ready to start launching product. Interestingly, however, they’re not launching loads of product all at once this week and are instead waiting for other events to blow their wad. Otherwise, look for a healthy – but not overly heady – mix of froth and substance.